lshum@utzoo.UUCP (Ken Newman) (03/07/84)
I was wondering if there were any new Atari games out on the market since the last batch. I live in the cold wastelands to the north (Toronto, in particular, and I see advertisements for games in the magazines which are not available in any of the stores. The last batch of games to appear here were Joust, Jungle Hunt, and Pole Position. I have seen advertised Donkey Kong Jr., Pengo and Robotron:2084 as being available - has anyone seen these games? I am most interested in Robotron:2084, as this game was unbelievable in the arcades, and I am waiting to see if the Atari can handle its required speed. << minor flame coming >> What really burns me up is Atarisoft coming up with Robotron and Stargate for all of the other computers: Apple, C64, IBM, etc BEFORE bringing it out for the Atari computers. I've heard the excuse that Atarisoft is a different division, but I don't really care about these corporate excuses! <<minor flame ends >> In any case, here is the promised review. I bought Joust a little while ago, and was initially disappointed by a few things. Firstly, the resolution of the birds is nowhere near the arcade version, and the birds are essentially monochrome (with a white line through the middle representing a lance). It would have been nice if the legs or the head of the bird were a different color. Secondly, whenever there are more than 4 (or 5) birds in a horizontal row, they begin to flicker. It would appear that they are using players to display the birds (since collision detection is necessary/vital), and whenever they need more players than are available, they time-slice the display, and flicker occurs. This really isn't so bad, since it is a relatively rare occurence, (at least at the lower levels), and only lasts until you kill off some of the birds. One other problem is that the game slows down when there are many (more than ~8 objects) on the screen. It seems that detecting collisions among so many objects is quite time consuming. I believe that this is why they did not include the little men hatching out of the eggs, and having the birds swoop by and pick them up (the men hatch riding on the birds already, and are temporarily vulnerable while sitting in a half-open shell). Well, enough complaints and time for some praise. The rest of the game is excellently done: all of the arcade waves are there, the pterodactyl appears when you are slow and during the "pterry" wave, there are "egg" and "survival" waves, and the lava troll makes a grab for you occasionally. Also, there are 4 levels of difficulty which are graduated nicely from novice - for people who have to learn how to fly, to expert - which starts off harder than the arcade version. Also, (the credit goes to Williams for this) this is one of the only true 2-player games on the market (where 2 players play together on the same screen) where you are rewarded for co-operation, and well as for competition (during "team" and "gladiator" waves). The rest of the graphics (the background rock) is very accurate, while the animation - birds flapping and being pulled down by gravity, and the eggs bouncing off the rock are very realistic and predictable by real-life experience. All in all, in spite of its deficiencies, an excellent game and one of my current favourites (love to play against my girlfriend) and I recommend it highly. Jerry Zarycky ...!utzoo!lshum ...!utcsrgv!drz